MARIO TRIMARCHI Via Ariosto 28, 20145 Milano [email protected] www.mariotrimarchi.eu

Mario Trimarchi Architect and designer

Mario Trimarchi was born in Messina. He graduated in with Franco Purini, with whom he collaborated on some projects in Sicily. In the 1980s he moved to , where he lives and works. In the early 1990s, he was the director of the Master in Design at the Domus Academy and later headed the DDA, a joint venture between the Domus Academy and Mitsubishi, alternating long business trips to with conferences, lectures and workshops in various countries throughout the world. In 1999 he founded Fragile, a corporate identity studio, where, in parallel with strategic positioning and communication projects for companies and institutions, he continued his personal research on design. For nearly ten years he was part of the Olivetti Design Studio, where he designed, along with Michele De Lucchi, personal computers and cash dispensers. During the same period he studied how to give a domestic touch to technological innovation, creating concept designs and products for , and Matsushita Denku. From 2005 to 2015 he taught Corporate Identity at the University of Genoa and since 2013 teaches the Brand Design Course as part of the Product Design specialist degree at the Naba in Milan. Since 2016 he is the Design Advisor for the Korea Craft & Design Foundation. His objects too are created from the aesthetic experiments that distinguish his work; objects that are centered on the relationship between unstable geometries and sculpture and almost always accompanied by drawings and small illustrated stories. He designs for Alessi with a certain continuity, creating unexpected products, including baskets and trays La Stanza dello Scirocco [Good Design 2010], the silicone drum series and copper moulds Il Tempo della Festa [Design Plus 2013 and Mention of Honor at the XXIII ADI Gold Compass]. In 2014 he designed the Ossidiana coffee maker winning the XXIV ADI Gold Compass Award, the Red Dot Award, the International Design Award Silver and the brand DfA-Quality Design for All. Between 2015 and 2016, he self- produced the Oggetti Smarriti and Strawberry Fields Forever collections, boundary works on the future of new, unstable, but optimistic domestic objects. In 2017 he presented Swan, a technological high-performance sculptured faucet, developed for Hansa and Alessi [Good Design 2017]. In the same year he designed a line of printed fabrics for a capsule collection made in Orange Fiber for Salvatore Ferragamo. For De Castelli, in 2018 he designed Samotracia, a motorcycle in copper that slowly oxidises and shifts its color towards green, over the span of one century, offering an interpretation of the aesthetic of speed and above all reflections on the flow of time and the life of our objects. In June 2019 the first solo show by Mario Trimarchi at the Italian Cultural Institute in was opened, with the title Mario Trimarchi. Un romantique radical. Réflexions, dessins et objets en équilibre, presenting a poetic narrative in 26 original drawings, objects and prototypes. Also in June, during Barcelona Design Week, the Italian Cultural Institute in Barcelona organized the exhibition of Mario Trimarchi’s drawings, titled Transitions: the search for the boundary between useful and useless.